(3 of 3)
Born at Ottumwa, Iowa, of a father who ran away from home to participate as a drummer-boy at twelve on the battlefield of Shiloh, Honore Willsie Morrow has led a life that has been a consistent development toward the goal which she has sought. Her childhood was spent in the West and it is of the West that she has written. Her stories are vivid, decisive tales of plain and hill. They are filled with excellent background and quick characterization. They move rapidly. They are good stories, probably the best of all the western stories. Mrs. Morrow herself, is tall, dark, a person of rare dignity and poise and of no pretentious. For five years she edited The Delineator. She is modest and she is ambitious. Her new novel,* appearing serially now in Everybody's is called The Devonshers and is a combination of mystery, adventure and the great West. She is a careful workman, spends weeks of hard work revising a manuscript that does not satisfy her. She is, of course, thoroughly American, and she possesses a curious sort of pioneer quality. Just what that quality is you would have to meet her to know. It is this quality that I imagine you will find in her new novels—the novels she is going to write from now on. They will still be of the West; but they will probably show that great historical background of pioneer days with which she is familiar.
Mrs. Morrow is not only interested in her writing; she is exceedingly interested in her children. Of them and of their problems, she is far more willing to speak than of her work. She is essentially a home-loving woman; her interests, while broad, are concentrated in her home, a new home—for she has recently been married again to William Morrow, of the firm of Stokes, her publishers.
Here is a woman who has two great gifts; first, the gift of story telling, second, the gift of looking deep into life and understanding it analytically as well as emotionally. When these two gifts are combined in her work, I fancy that she will write a novel which will not only be as popular as her others, but will challenge the laurels of our older women novelists.
J. F.
*CRAZY MAN—Maxwell Bodenheim—Hat-court ($2.00). * Her works include: Heart of the Desert, Still Jim, The Enchanted Canyon.